Submissions/Small is beautiful - GLAM in small museums

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2014.

Submission no. 2034

Title of the submission: Small is beautiful - GLAM in small museums

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): presentation

Author of the submission: Andy Mabbett

E-mail address: Special:EmailUser/Pigsonthewing

Username: Pigsonthewing

Country of origin: UK

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Personal homepage or blog: http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal): For the last four years, Wikipedians in Residence at major, internationally-significant GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) such as the British Museum, the National Archives of the United States, the British Library, the Dutch National Archive and Library, and the like have, rightly, been headline-grabbing, and very beneficial to them and to the Wikimedia movement. But the majority of GLAMs are smaller, more local in focus, and in many cases are highly specialised. Not to mention less-well resourced. Andy Mabbett has been a Wikipedian in Residence several times, including successful periods at The New Art Gallery Walsall, Staffordshire Archives and Heritage Services (including Staffordshire County Museum, and the historic William Salt Library) and Lancashire County Council Museum Service (based at their Queen Street Mill). He has also run shorter-term projects with partner organisations including the Black Country Living Museum, The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the tiny West Midlands Police Museum, and the Institution of Civil Engineers, and many more. Based on these experiences, and honest appraisal of their achievements and failures, he will examine the issues facing such GLAMs when making decisions about open licensing their content and hosting Wikipedia (and sister project) events, and the issues these cause in turn for the Wikimedia community, and within that community. He will suggest ways of resolving, or at least managing, issues that might arise in such projects. Reasons given by small GLAMs, based on real discussions with them, for not undertaking collaboration will be examined. He will also describe the advantages to the Wikimedia Community (and to society at large!) of collaborative working with small and medium sized GLAM organisations, including private company and non-public-facing public-sector archives. Ending positively, he will describe some unlikely discoveries, new to Wikipedia, made in small GLAMs, including verifiable additions to Wikipedia articles about Thunderbirds and George Bernard Shaw!

Track: GLAM Outreach

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes (or as required)

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Possibly

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

MartinPoulter (talk) 15:11, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Polimerek (talk) 10:10, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
the wub "?!" 23:57, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yiyi (talk) 09:53, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Matthias Süßen (talk) 20:09, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Beko (talk) 09:45, 30 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sshhiivv (talk) 22:29, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
probably, VIGNERON (talk) 07:52, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Spinster (talk) 12:45, 5 August 2014 (UTC), looking forward![reply]
--OlafJanssen (talk) 14:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
NickK (talk) 00:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Urjanhai (talk) 13:53, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Add your username here.